Blacksburg, Va., May 12, 2005 – Researchers from China and the United States have found evidence of lichen-like symbiosis in 600-million-year-old fossils from South China. The previous earliest ...

The planet may be warming too quickly for tiny organisms called lichens to adapt, according to new research. Lichens are widespread plant-like organisms often seen growing on rocks, trees, and ...

To learn how lichens might be able to adapt to climate change, researchers examined the evolutionary history of the algae that's a part of 7,000 kinds of lichens. By studying genetic relationships ...

One of life’s most important symbiotic partnerships may be threatened by a warming climate. Lichens — a composite organism made from cyanobacteria or algae entangled within the body of a fungus — may ...

A new study reveals that the evolution of sunscreen pigments in lichen-forming fungi has been governed by the reshuffling of existing enzyme genes and novel accessory genes into new gene clusters.

When I usually examine lichens, I am in a forest, peering at frilly growths on tree branches with my hand lens. Or on exposed rocks high in the Alps, or old gravestones, or the rocky seashore, in the ...

Two Canadian biologists are proposing a better way to assess the conservation value of old-growth forests in North America—using lichens, sensitive bioindicators of environmental change.

Scientists thought that reindeer lichens (moss-looking organisms that form a major part of reindeer diets) reproduced mainly asexually by cloning themselves. But it turns out, reindeer lichens are ...